


In Search of the Unknown

by Septembers_coda



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Celebrations, Chuck Shurley is God, Dungeons & Dragons References, Fluff and Angst, Fluff in the Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Games, Gen, Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Some Humor, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:13:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27050254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septembers_coda/pseuds/Septembers_coda
Summary: Sam reflects on faith, God, and a rare good memory. He then decides to lead Dean, Cas, and Jack in a (much lighter hearted than usual) “search of the unknown”.Written for the Summergen challenge 2020 on LiveJournal.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7
Collections: Supernatural Summergen 2020





	In Search of the Unknown

Chuck didn’t look up as Sam came in. The guitar he played with flashing-silver fingerpicks was large and round-bellied, its old polished wood shining in the lamplight of the low-lit hotel lounge. Sam knew little about guitar, but he thought this sounded and looked almost like a Renaissance lute. The words God sang in an uncommonly sweet, melodious refrain were in Latin.

_Dona nobis pacem,_ he sang, over and over like a gentle, twining breeze. Give us peace.

“Heya, Sammy,” he said, as the song concluded. “Is it time to wrap this thing up?”

“Think so,” said Sam. He pulled a beer from the green cooler between them and handed it to Chuck, who set the guitar aside and cracked it open.

“Not how I planned on ending it,” he said. “I had good intentions at the beginning, you know. The best. It was supposed to be… beautiful.”

“It is beautiful. And nobody ever said it had to end,” Sam answered. He cracked open another beer for himself, and sipped it.

“Can it really be this easy?”

“In which of the billion worlds you created would this ever be called easy, Chuck?”

Chuck smiled. “You came to get me, Sam. You and Dean. I knew you would.”

“No man left behind,” said Sam, and clinked his bottle with God’s.

* * *

Sam woke, the wound on his shoulder throbbing. The ache went deeper than his flesh, into his shattered faith.

Had God actually sent this dream? His style when painting Sam’s subconscious was usually more pain, blood and betrayal, the death of his brother, the corruption of his own soul. Usually, he didn’t provide a soundtrack of music, particularly not a madrigal of delicate, ethereal beauty, intricately and tenderly played on a classical guitar.

When he’d learned that the angels were corrupt, ugly and self-serving and sometimes even evil, it had been a soul-shaking blow. There had been a thousand harder hits to his faith since, but meeting God himself…. Was this petty, angry, sulking… Winchester _fanboy_ really the creator of the whole universe? The Chuck of his dream seemed to be asking the same question. There was no doubt that Sam and Dean were coming for him, but he sounded… weary and relieved, not posturing and wrathful like the God they’d known in recent days. Give us peace, he sang. Was he asking Sam and Dean to save him, or challenging them to try to destroy him? And really, what was the difference? Their mission statement was “saving people, hunting things,” so Sam guessed the real question was whether God was a person or a _thing._

He wondered if he had shattered his faith himself when it no longer served him, or if his whole, long life beyond belief could be blamed. Was it demon blood on his lips, the gun his father gave him to defend against monsters under the bed, the cruelty in the eyes of angels? Or was it the scruffy little prophet, writing him into hell like the shitty dime store hack he was?

He missed that guy, truth be told. His heart ached as he remembered Chuck before God, finding his pulp novels in the comic book store, shoving open the door of the house of the harmless little guy in a bathrobe who knew his future. And his past.

Maybe none of it was real. Maybe he _was_ just a character in a book, suffering and fighting for the entertainment of a handful of people who liked crappy writing and clichéd storylines. Maybe, somehow, he could just close the book. Wake up in another life, a different story. Or better yet, no story at all. He could just be a guy with who worked in IT and came home to microwave a pizza, watch Game of Thrones and go to sleep on the couch in his underwear. Go to a sports bar with a couple of coworkers every now and then, flirt with some nice, plain girl who sat in the corner with her friends and never thought a guy would buy her a drink. He could be ordinary. He didn’t have to be a good-looking 6’5 and in marathon-runner shape, for God’s sake. He could be normal height with a pot belly, someone people didn’t look at twice, not the guy you put in charge of saving the world.

It was early morning, hours before Dean was likely to be awake. He didn’t want to get out of bed. There was no reason to. They had no case, no leads, nothing but the usual threat of the world ending any minute to worry about. He rolled over, thinking of trying to go back to sleep, when his eye caught the corner of a box sticking out from under the end of his bed. It was full of books he had stashed there,—not research but pleasure-reading. He’d been collecting them at used bookstores over the years in the vain hope he’d have time to read them.

Or re-read them, he reflected, peering at the visible slice of a familiar cover. He scooted to the end of the bed and pulled the book out of the box.

His face ached as its muscles pulled in an unfamiliar pattern, and Sam realized he was grinning broadly. Why had he bought this? He must have been having a fit of nostalgia. It was a tattered, well-thumbed paperback with one corner of the cover ripped off. Inside, in pencil, was written _25₵._

A quarter to relive a rare _good_ summer of childhood memories was a bargain, Sam reflected. _Dungeons & Dragons™ Endless Quest™ Book, _ he read. _Pillars of Pentagarn_ by Rose Estes. The yellow cover and scrolling font took him right back to the early nineties, the backseat of the Impala, the cool, musty smelling church basement at Pastor Jim’s. 

Funny. He thought these books were called Choose Your Own Adventure—he’d read plenty of those too, but someone else must own that copyright. These books were published by TSR Hobbies, just like the D&D game itself. Rose Estes had written a lot of them, Sam recalled. Maybe she was a prophet or a god, too—but a kinder one than Chuck, offering her characters a second chance when they screwed up. He thumbed through the slender paperback, noting all the spots previous owners had dog-eared so they could do just that.

Wouldn’t it be great if he could go back to a turning point in his own book? Change the ending, make it the final book in the series? He could picture it: 

_If you choose to drink Ruby’s blood, go to page 16.  
If you choose to run away to Australia, lock yourself in a basement for a month, and then learn to surf, go to page 107. _

He sighed. He’d have to go back further than that, he guessed. It wouldn’t have worked no matter what he’d chosen, though. He’d tried running away, more than once, but all roads led to hell. It really was an endless quest.

He let it go as best he could—the mistakes, the apocalypse before and behind—as he paged through the old book. Memories of the time before terrifying choices, days when blood and darkness were only things his father hid from him, stole over him in a strangely sweet flood, tinged with the scent of dust and old books, damp industrial carpet muffling the sound of distant thunder.

* * *

Sam looked up from his book, squinting in the low light. It was raining, so he and Dean were stuck inside at Pastor Jim’s—except Dean had bolted sometime earlier, having miraculously been invited to a girl’s house, something he managed to finagle a surprising amount of the time these days.

Sam liked it here. There were shelves full of books, board games, even an old TV and VCR, though there were no good movies. An old box fan clattered away in the high window, drawing in air cooled by the rain. He was in the rec room in the basement, and technically it was open to the public, particularly kids, but they rarely came in, except for Sunday school, or for some wholesome church-sponsored summer class their parents forced them to take. On Wednesday nights it was full of smoke and the smell of burnt coffee, when the local AA group met here. But right now, on a rainy Friday in June, Sam thought he’d have it to himself all day, plenty of time to Choose his Own Adventure.

Until unexpectedly, someone _did_ come in—a kid about his age who froze when he saw Sam. After staring wide-eyed at Sam for a minute, he pretended not to see him, and to be irresistibly drawn to the shelves of books on the other side of the rec room. 

Sam went back to his book, holding his finger in the page where he decided whether to join in the fighting or watch from a safe hiding place, but he could feel the kid looking at him. He looked up, and the kid looked away quickly from where he’d been peeking at Sam through the bookshelf. Sam heard him shuffling his feet. The next time he looked up, the kid had emerged from the shelves and was looking at him.

“Hey,” Sam said.

The kid looked away, shuffled his feet, then muttered, “Hi”, so quietly Sam could hardly hear him. He went back to his book for a minute, but then the kid blurted, “Do you wanna play a game?”

* * *

Cas, Dean, and Jack were at the map table when Sam came in, juggling a shopping bag and a pizza box. “Hey, good timing,” said Dean, taking the pizza and shoving aside a stack of books to make room for it.

“I just mentioned that I was hungry,” said Jack, eyes lighting on the box.

“Good,” said Sam absently, and set his bag on the table, pulling out the contents at random. 

“Did you bring back some lore books, Sam?” asked Cas. He picked up a book Sam had pulled out and frowned, puzzled. The diagonal yellow stripe across the top left corner declared it Advanced D&D: the Monster Manual. The late-70s art that graced its cover showed a dragon in the sky above a club-wielding centaur and a unicorn, the underground showing less savory monsters.

“Not exactly.”

To Sam’s surprise, Dean picked up the book. He was grinning. “Man, I remember this. I haven’t thought about this in years.” 

Sam looked at Jack, who was looking between them with interest. He gave him a small smile, which Jack returned as Dean went on.

“Remember that kid that went to Pastor Jim’s church that you used to play this with? Then he told you he couldn’t anymore, because his mom caught him.”

“Bradley. Yeah, whatever she said to him worked pretty well, because not only would he not play D&D anymore, he wanted me to swear not to, too, and get rid of the books. He was afraid I would go to hell.”

“Well, he was right,” said Dean, reaching across the table to clap him on the shoulder. “Though wrong about the reasons, cause I went first and I never played that game.”

“Never too late to start,” Sam said. He tapped the cover of Dungeon Module B1—In Search of the Unknown, then busily distributed some of his other purchases around the table. “Yep, pretty sure poor old Bradley had no idea I was gonna actually become the Devil’s vessel and voluntarily jump into hell,” he continued lightly. 

“Or that the two of us would be trying to kill God a few years after that.” Dean eyed Cas as he said it, looking uncertainly at the character sheet Sam handed him. Jack fingered a twenty-sided die, fascinated.

“He probably didn’t see all the blood rituals and demon-alliances coming, either. Or maybe he did. His mom _really_ scared him about D&D.” 

The brothers laughed, and Sam felt a bit of his pain release with the sound. Cas was frowning at them, but Jack was smiling bigger than ever.

“Sam, I hardly think now is the time for—” Cas began, but Jack interrupted him.

“I’d like to learn to play this game,” he said. “Killing God can wait.”

Cas looked like he wanted to object, but his face softened as he looked at Jack. “I suppose you ought to have some… normal human experiences,” he said uncertainly.

“Not sure you’d call this normal,” said Dean, “though a lot more normal than most of what we ever did.” 

Sam watched his face, feeling strangely vulnerable. Dean shrugged. “I’m in,” he said, stuffing a half a slice of pizza in his mouth. “What do we do?”

Sam’s eyes lit up. He could hardly contain the strange, wild feeling of elation. Choices to make, to steer his brother and his friends in, an adventure that could have a happy ending! “First we make characters,” he said. “I always liked to be a wizard. Magic missile for the win. I picture you as a fighter—barbarian, maybe,” he said to Dean.

“Hey, watch who you’re calling barbarian,” said Dean, but he was smiling. “Do I get a sword? Or maybe a big, spiked club?” He flexed his bicep. “I’m totally ripped, of course.”

“Sure. Use your highest roll for strength, then,” said Sam, pointing to the list of attributes on the character sheet: Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. “Totals out of 18. You can roll five six-sided dice and take the highest three. Jack, look here for the character types and see what sounds good to you.” He handed Jack the Player’s Handbook. “Cas, I picture you as a cleric. Every party needs one.”

A sweet smile stole over Jack’s features as he read. “If I chose bard,” said Jack, “would I get to sing? Or make up rhymes?”

“If you want to,” said Sam, while Dean groaned in objection.

And so they played. Sam sat back, smiling in satisfaction. Despite his complaints and accusations of nerdiness, it had been a long time since he’d seen Dean have so much fun. He affected an Arnold Schwarzenegger accent and pretended to swing a club whenever he rolled dice. Sam could picture them all: Dean, with mighty thews bulging over his fur kilt, knocking down orcs like they were bowling pins. Cas, dressed in long white robes with mysterious sigils on them, murmuring a spell of healing over a bloodied, swearing Dean after Dean rushed headlong into a fight too big for him. Jack, in a tunic and tights, nonchalantly extolling rhyme and strumming a lute as battle raged around him. 

And himself: Sam, the master of the arcane, graceful, with long white hair and clever hands, walking a lawful good path, never falling to temptation or failing at a rescue, casting spells that filled the world with light to drive back evil. 

Sam smiled, grateful that today, instead of beating his head against the wall trying to do research, he’d gone out in search of D&D books. He’d driven over two hours and visited a hobby shop, two used bookstores, and a comic book store, but the plunder was worth the journey. He was glad to put aside memories of pain and death, and instead, to remember an awkward boy in a church basement, and one choice he’d made—sure, he’d like to play a game—that had brought him only joy.

They might die tomorrow; it was looking pretty likely. But right now, laughing together as they rolled dice that looked like gems under the map-table’s lamp, ordering another pizza instead of arguing over the last slice, it didn’t seem to matter. They pondered which path to take through darkness while knowing, for once, that they could make it end in light.


End file.
